ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the link between national political crisis over the constitution (which represented an attempt to manage historical differences), and policies that seek to produce and manage identity through cultural events such as national celebrations. It shows, through analysis of the build-up to the constitutional crisis and nationalist celebrations of 1992, that the constant reproduction of ‘identity crisis’ makes possible the regulation and state intervention in identity at national as well as local levels. This chapter also traces the mechanisms through which, as a response to the perceived ‘crisis’, a new form of ‘populism’ and new definitions of ‘the people’ began to gain legitimacy. It explores how representing itself as ‘populist’ became a primary goal of the government in numerous sites, and how ‘the people’ became a key contested metaphor at both national and local levels.
